Biography of last Chinese eunuch reveals a tumultuous life

[IbPervert (imported)]

Apparently from yesterdays LA Times...the site includes a picture...

ibpervert

Biography of last Chinese eunuch reveals a tumultuous life (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... rint.story)

Castrated at 8, Sun Yaoting hoped for an imperial life of riches. Instead, he experienced palace intrigue, war, revolution, scorn and, finally, recognition.

By Barbara Demick

8:39 PM PST, March 5, 2009

Reporting from Beijing — Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor.

The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic.

"Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!"

Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history. The imperial court was resuscitated long enough to give Sun a chance to serve the wife of the boy emperor Puyi -- a position that gave him the distinction of being the last eunuch to the last Chinese emperor.

After the Communists came to power in 1949, Sun and other surviving eunuchs were despised as freakish symbols of the feudal past. He was nearly killed during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, and his siblings were so fearful of persecution that they threw away his bao, or treasure: the severed genitals that eunuchs kept pickled in a jar so they could be buried as complete men.

It was not until the final years of his life that Sun was recognized as a rare living repository of history. A biography based on hours of interviews in the years before his death in 1996 was recently translated into English. The book arrives as a museum dedicated to eunuchs, built around the tomb of a 16th century eunuch, is undergoing a major expansion. It is scheduled to reopen in May.

Whether the interest is prurient or scholarly, the curiosity is definitely there.

Emasculation was thought to render eunuchs nonpersons, without ambition or ego, so their presence in the innermost sanctum of the imperial palace did not violate the emperor's privacy.

"The eunuchs were very mysterious and in some ways more interesting than the emperors themselves," said Jia Yinghua, Sun's biographer. Jia met Sun when he was researching a book about Puyi, and recorded 100 hours of conversations with him.

The biography, "The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting," contains everything you might want to know about the gruesome particulars of becoming a eunuch, along with much you probably would not want to know.

Suffice it to say the boys went through excruciating pain without benefit of anesthesia (other than chile peppers in some cases). In addition to a lifetime of impotence, they often suffered incontinence in exchange for entry to the palace.

Sun was unusual: Inspired by an older eunuch from his village who had become rich, he decided for himself that he wanted to follow this path. But then the emperor was deposed and the castration had left him too weak for farm work.

The emperor retained the trappings of power in the Forbidden City, however. Sun came to Beijing at age 14, still wearing the pigtail of Chinese boys at the time. He got a job with one of the emperor's uncles, and later with Puyi's wife.

He followed the imperial family to Manchuria after Puyi was installed in 1932 as puppet emperor of a Japanese colonial state known as Manchukuo.

Sun was privy to the court's most intimate secrets, the opium addiction and out-of-wedlock pregnancy of the emperor's first wife, Wanrong, and the emperor's ambivalence about his own sexuality. Sun later told his biographer that Puyi was less interested in his wife than in a particular eunuch who "looked like a pretty girl with his tall, slim figure, handsome face and creamy white skin." He recalled that the two were "inseparable as body and shadow."

After the Communists came to power, many of the eunuchs became penniless outcasts. A few drowned themselves in the moats of the Forbidden City. Sun, one of the few who was literate, got a job as caretaker of a temple, where he lived until his death. The recollections of an adopted son and a grandson, together with the biography, make him one of the most documented eunuchs of modern times.

Scholars also will tell you about other eunuchs: Cai Lun was credited with inventing paper in AD 105. Zheng He became one of China's greatest explorers in the 15th century. But eunuchs are generally depicted in Chinese literature as conniving and greedy, the stock villains of many a palace intrigue.

The eunuch museum is in an overgrown cemetery with stone guardians and a tomb for the Ming dynasty eunuch Tian Yi, who died in 1602. Eunuchs were not permitted to be buried with their families, so several other favored eunuchs found their final resting place in Tian Yi's compound in the foothills of west Beijing.

Hidden behind what had been an elementary school, the tombs somehow escaped destruction during the Cultural Revolution and were opened to the public in 1999. The expanded museum is to display paintings of eunuchs, a photo collection about Sun's life and other 20th century eunuchs, and items such as the curved knives used to castrate them.

"The eunuchs are part of a long Chinese tradition that continues to this day in which the regular people had to do anything to serve the all-powerful central government," said Cui Weixing, a literary and cultural critic who has written about eunuchs.

"Maybe that's why the Chinese government isn't so anxious to publicize anything about eunuchs. But it is a good start that we'll have this museum so that people can begin to learn."

[speedvogel (imported)]

That is a really good find. I hope to find the book.

speed

[Hash (imported)]

Since he was only 8 years old at the time of his castration, he did not know what he would lose, his sexual desire. Had he waited or been allowed to wait until puberty, would he have been so willing to submit to being castrated? Not that he had a choice since his own father did the castration. I read that at one time in China, so many men were castrating themselves or getting castrated to gain employment in the palace, that a certain Emperor banned the practice. I wonder if Sun discusses any of his intimate relationships with Puyi's wife? Did she expect him to please her sexually in any way? I guess I'll get the book.

[JesusA (imported)]

The book is a US$ 98.00 paperback! I have it on order from Amazon, where it is on sale where it "only" costs $71.54. I'll post a review on the Nonfiction Board once it arrives.

[A-1 (imported)]

The book is a US$ 98.00 paperback! I have it on order from Amazon, where it is on sale where it "only" costs $71.54. I'll post a review on the Nonfiction Board once it arrives.

Cripes!

That is a lot of money... I wonder who is getting the profits from that one!

[calmeilles (imported)]

The book is a US$ 98.00 paperback! I have it on order from Amazon, where it is on sale where it "only" costs $71.54. I'll post a review on the Nonfiction Board once it arrives.

It appears to be available for the iPhone Reader for $3.99

http://www.iphonedownloadblog.com/2009/ ... -of-china/

Shame I don't have an iPhone.

Amazon UK has the book as so thoroughly unavailable they don't even bother suggesting a price.

[Hash (imported)]

Jesus, not to question your omnipotence or omniscience, but do you have the correct price? If iphone has it for $3.99, it shouldn't be $71. plus, and who would pay that much for a book? Oh, sorry. I'll leave before I'm dismissed or disemboweled. My apologies.

[JesusA (imported)]

The iPhone price probably is $3.99 for exactly the same text as in the printed version. Small edition books from exotic presses tend to run very high. I’ve paid a lot more than this for specialized books and didn’t even think to look for a cheaper source.

Other times I’m surprised by how LITTLE books can cost. I’d been looking for one book on the anthropology of intentional mutilations of the human body that was published in a very small edition in Buenos Aires in 1938. I couldn’t even find a U.S. library with a copy available through inter-library loan. I finally found a copy on the website of a small used book store in southern Germany. Including shipping it cost less than US$20! It’s even signed by the authors. I now own Deformaciones Intencionales del Cuerpo Humano de Carácter Étnico by Adolfo Dembo and José Imbelloni. The chapter on castration is more than worth the price for its information about the contemporary slave trade from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. There is an incredibly disturbing photograph of a young Ethiopian eunuch – probably about 5 or 6 years old – showing his castration scar, who was rescued by Italian troops from a slave caravan in Somalia.

The chapters on deformations caused by high heels, Chinese foot-binding and Victorian corsets (with X-rays included) are incredible.

My collection of books and articles on castration and eunuchs is now large enough that the Kinsey Institute has asked for assurances that I've remembered them in my will. Their librarian keeps telephoning me about it....

[calmeilles (imported)]

Google found me the publisher's press page about the release of the English edition yesterday and I think it was RMB 90 which would be $13. Still 3 times what the subject of the book earned a month, so maybe "expensive" is relative.

Garden books is holding a talk (http://www.thebeijinger.com/events/2009 ... huaAuthor-) with both author and translator on 21 March 2009, anyone free to pop over to beijing?

My collection of books and articles on castration and eunuchs is now large enough that the Kinsey Institute has asked for assurances that I've remembered them in my will. Their librarian keeps telephoning me about it....

Oh please, please, please make the bequest requiring it be called "The Jesus Collection"

[Quillman (imported)]

Google found me the publisher's press page about the release of the English edition yesterday and I think it was RMB 90 which would be $13. Still 3 times what the subject of the book earned a month, so maybe "expensive" is relative.

Garden books is holding a talk (http://www.thebeijinger.com/events/2009 ... huaAuthor-) with both author and translator on 21 March 2009, anyone free to pop over to beijing?

Oh please, please, please make the bequest requiring it be called "The Jesus Collection"

Thanks, that gave me a great laugh perhaps for the first time for ages- especially as I know it is true!!!



Quillman UK